This phone could be placed by some as the most advanced smartphone to date (only some new, unreleased yet, PocketPC-phones come close in terms of features): Sony Ericsson announced the P990, based on Symbian 9.1. It supports UMTS, GSM/GPRS/3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, IrDA and it has an FM radio. It sports a 2.8" QVGA touchscreen, 80 MBs free storage, a 64 MB MemoryStickPRODuo (expandable to 4 GB), Blackberry Push Email, a QWERTY keyboard, and two cameras: a 2 MP on the back and a VGA on the front. For web browser it uses Opera 8.x.

Sorry, it doesn't come even close to the P990. The QWERTY keyboard on the P990, the WiFi, the 3G, are all must have for me. The only good thing the 7710 has over the P990 is the higher-res LCD which is due to its form-factor (that I don't like, as it's difficult to work with one hand).

It supports UMTS, GSM/GPRS/3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, IrDA and it has an FM radio. It sports a 2.8" QVGA touchscreen, 80 MBs free storage, a 64 MB MemoryStickPRODuo (expandable to 4 GB), Blackberry Push Email, a QUERTY keyboard, and two cameras: a 2 MP on the back and a VGA on the front. For web browser it uses Opera 8.x.

Obviously my remark was sarcastic-- but really, this is not a phone. It's a PDA. I would never ever want something like this as a 'phone'.

A mobile phone needs to make phonecalls and send textmessages. All the extra stuff is just useless fluff, that makes the thing heavier, harder to use, gives it shorter battery life, longer boottime, longer re-charging time, more vulnerable (the little flap over the screen, the touch screen itself), etc.

Well, it depends what you want. Currently, you have to take with you both your Sharp phone and your PalmOS PDA. With this device, you need to only carry around a single device. For me, this is a major plus, along the interoperability between apps and contacts that is natural to exist.

Like it or not, people want to see devices that do "more". In a few years, even the low-end phones will be as advanced, so I suggest you buy a bunch of low-end phones today to use them in the future.

Currently, you have to take with you both your Sharp phone and your PalmOS PDA.

Wrong. I only carry my Palm with me in my bag when I go to university. For the rest, I *never* take it with me because I do not need the functionality it covers (keeping track of appointments). My phone, however, is with me 24/7, and needs to be a lot sturdier.

I doubt that this SonyEricsson PDA will saturdays night out, Dutch style.

Like it or not, people want to see devices that do "more". In a few years, even the low-end phones will be as advanced, so I suggest you buy a bunch of low-end phones today to use them in the future.

I'm planning on buying the Nokia 8800. It has all sorts of advanced stuff too, but unlike this SonyEricsson PDA, *calling* is still the central functionality of the device. That is what makes me not like these advanced PDAs-disguised-as-phones-- they put the emphasis on functionality you rarely use, and forget what it's really about: calling and sending txt msgs.

My current Sharp TM100 isn;t exactly low-end, but it also puts calling and txtmessages central. That's why I bought it in the first place. And it looks awesome, and has a good screen and excellent keyboard, of course .

>It has all sorts of advanced stuff too, but unlike this SonyEricsson PDA, *calling* is still the central functionality of the device.

I really don't know why you think this P990 does not have the same thing. Just because it has super-additional functionality, it does not make it a non-phone. I think you are unfair here, because the main input panel is the numeric one, not the keyboard. And the UIC's central menu is all about calling too.

I think you can't compare the Nokia 8800 with the P990. They're just completely different universes of usage and lifestyle. I am with Eugenia on the fact that you can't say the P990 doesn't have good calling/reception performance. But most importantly, I think that, if you are interested in the Nokia 8800, you are a very different customer from Eugenia. I think the needs of the two of you are so different, it makes no sense arguing.

I, for example, am the Nokia 8800 type of guy. Build quality, small form-factor and beautiful design is something I value. Mind you, I am the kind of nerd that likes antiques and expensive old books and furniture.

I like to be able to tuck my phone in the inner pocket of my jacket, and I like the scratch resistence of the display and the durable yet sexy shell. And said all that, the phone has all the features I personally find necessary, including 64 MB of builtin memory and a hardware MP3 player and radio.

Well my P900 survived the Zurich Street Parade and after that the Energy, so even if it
seems not the case, is pretty robust (at least without removing the flip)

> I'm planning on buying the Nokia 8800. It has all sorts of advanced stuff too, but unlike this
> SonyEricsson PDA, *calling* is still the central functionality of the device

Calling *IS* still the principal function of the P* series : navigating contacts or messages is fast
thanks to the thumb wheel, text messaging uses T9 and even using the stylus is pretty fast : it
recognize the text instantly.
Surely it has a horrendous boot time, but the rest of the 'phone part' works well.

What makes Sony's mermory "shitty" as you put it? Yes it is a little more expensive than some of the alternative technologies, but other than cost, what's so bad about it? It's nice, small, compact, and convenient, and I never had reliability problems with it. (I've used it in a digital camera in the past.)

I don't like either Memory Stick, but thing is, there is no real "standard" for storage in this market, so anyone pushes for whatever they want... Motorola has transflash, Nokia has a special kind of MMC, PocketPCs use SD, etc. Personally, I would like to see the SD format used everywhere. I prefer CF for PDAs, but for phones, SD makes more sense.

Production technologists will be able to explain this in more detail, but anyway, point is that the cameras in mobile phones don't necessarily produce better pictures, with higher MP numbers. The resolution is, theoretically, better, but what usually happens with cameras with stated resolution of 1.3 or more _in mobile phones_, is that you have aliasing which produces way poorer images than you'd expect. Generally speaking, the quality of these cameras is low, and this can bite you with higher resolutions.

Anyway, don't do catalogue purchases with these beasts. Try it, and see what the real quality of the picture is. Pictures made with most 980 kilopixel (Nokia) mobile phone cameras are far better than any 1.3 MP or better non-Nokia phone. Uhh... I know, this sounds awfully lot like a plug, but all I am saying is, be careful.

Said all this, based purely on numbers, the P990 sound astounding. But, then again, it could be an astounding disappointment, too.

I want one of these. I love my Treo, but I can't use it instead of my digital camera or my MP3 player (well, my Neuros is currently dead, so I'm using my PSP to play music at the moment). So I currently have to wander around with my Treo in one pocket, a giganto-PSP in the other and my digicam stuck up my ass if I want to listen to music and take pictures worth a damn. Not ideal. I'm planning to buy one of these. It won't play music quite as well as my Neuros did or, say, an iAudio X5 would, but with a 2 / 4GB memory stick, it'll do - and it'll have the substantial benefit that I don't miss phone calls because I can't hear the ring or feel the vibration (I travel everywhere by bus, and they vibrate so much themselves you can never feel your phone go off...), and I don't have to futz about pausing the player before answering the phone. Again, it won't take photos even as well as my so-so two year old 3.2MP camera, but it WILL take photos good enough for the situations I usually take casual photos - hanging out with friends, etc. Word is it's the same camera as in the K750, and I've seen and used one of those and it's more than good enough for casual use. I'll take the convenience of carrying one little box versus three over the slight hit in performance any day.

Previously, it was difficult to type with the open cover. You see, the cover weigh less than the rest of the handset. All the weight of the handset was moving on the two hinches that keep the cover glued to the rest of the handset. This was a bad design IMHO, after a while the hinches would crack. Now, this can't happen. Besides, removing the numeric keypad, it STILL gives you a bigger screen. In fact, I wish the whole LCD was visible without having to open the numpad.

I actually own the P910i. And I agree that the internal keyboard is useless. But not only because it's clunky, but because it's too small. I end either writing with the pen when I'm at home, and with the external keyboard when I'm on the move.

The problem is that with a smaller screen it gets even harder to write with the pen because I need place to write (even with the few extra pixels). Also the hand-writing recognition software is not as good as on the Mobile 2003 phones I've seen.

All in all, the new features are all welcome but I hope they will change this keyboard design with something more clever.

It does the same thing now, it gives you a bigger display. But the point now is that not both the keypad and the numpad are on the same 'external' part that it only attaches to the main phone with two hinches. The previous models are problematic, because the pad weighs much less than the phone and so after a bit of time, the hinches CRACK. With this new design, this won't happen, because when you type you don't hold the phone from the cover part and so you don't put strain on it.

Bout time I updated my R380, I've been waiting for a version with colour + 3G since 2001!
If the build quality os anything similar it'll survive a night out no probs - I've taken the R380 out many a time.

The size and weight are no problem, I like a phone big enough for me to actually see and the weight means you're going to soon notice if it goes missing.

The styling of the 8800 is nicer but this is still a Phone-PDA as opposed to a PDA-Phone.

This is obviously not going to be a phone engineered for the mass consumer market (850 bucks first off)...but I have a feeling businesses will eat something like this up. Less stuff to carry around == cheaper deployment/support costs in the end.

I recently bought a W800i walkman phone. Unlike the P series this isn't a Symbian smartphone, it runs the SE internal/proprietary operating system (the OS with no name ..)

The W800i is basically a cooler version of the K750i, with a better mp3 player and more memory. Pretty much the same hardware apart from that.

I find it a beautiful, easy to use device that has many basic PDA features too. For instance it can take notes, it has a calendar/appointments manager, a stopwatch, a calculator and a few other bits I never use. It can also be extended using Java midlets which aren't quite as powerful as Symbian apps but can still do a fair bit.

The MP3 "walkman" features are what they advertise but actually it's the other features that make it good for me (their mp3 player software is useless for listening to DJ mixes). For instance it has an FM radio built in.

It's also a great phone: I'm not sure why I'd want such a huge and bulky device like the P series when the W800i is so small. A bigger screen on it would be nice I will admit but the existing one suffices OK. The camera is also quite high quality as long as you take pictures during daylight and keep the camera/subjects still. In the dark the picture quality suffers horribly and ditto if anybody moves when the picture is taken.

The W800i is one of the consumer phones that SonyEricsson make but for a simple student user like me it has more than enough PDA/extendability features. My only regret is that it's not a 3G phone so the best you can get is GPRS, not fast/cheap enough to listen to net radio with (which for me would be a killer app).